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File format cannot be open sourced. Tool for working with the format can, or the format can have published specification. Format itself doesn't have source code

• Hydraulix989 11y ago
  To be clear, what was "open sourced" was a C header file containing struct definitions and parsing functions for that file format. An implementation could be considered one way of providing a format/protocol specification.
  • dozzie 11y ago
    > "open sourced" was a C header file [...] Indeed. In my opinion too little to call it a day, but I haven't worked on implementing file handling, so I may be wrong here. > An implementation could be considered one way of providing a format/protocol specification. Not quite. Look at OpenVPN, which has hilarious situation: code is open, but protocol is effectively closed. You can't practically derive the protocol from OpenVPN's source (yes, I tried that). Unless you can put weeks of effort, of course.
    • analognoise 11y ago
      So it's a closed protocol because it's hard to understand? That doesn't seem to make much sense.
      • dozzie 11y ago
        No. It's closed because there's no specification or even an alternative implementation and you can't easily derive one.